


Story of My Life: Four Times John McClane was in the Wrong Place at the Right Time (and the One When he Got it the Other Way Around)

by persnickett



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Angst, Community: sexy_right, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-04
Updated: 2012-04-04
Packaged: 2017-11-03 01:10:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persnickett/pseuds/persnickett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Right Place. Wrong Time. Five things</p>
            </blockquote>





	Story of My Life: Four Times John McClane was in the Wrong Place at the Right Time (and the One When he Got it the Other Way Around)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the sexy_right Word Warm-Up.
> 
> Prompt: word list #3.  bruised, careful, famine, triangle, cart

They say coming out of the closet works exactly like this.

 

**One: Complete strangers**

John figures he’s seen his share of shit blow up in his day.  He’s just not in the habit of going back to see what it looks like afterward. 

The air almost seems too clear. There’s no smoke, just a shitload of dust covering everything, and the deserted quiet in a place that used to have life in it, used to be somebody’s _home_ , is more deafening than the cottony ringing the explosion left in his ears for hours afterward that day. 

The investigation at Farrell’s apartment has been over for weeks. The Feds and the local guys have already been over the place top to bottom. John doesn’t have a hell of a lot of memories of how the place was when they left it, but he knows they didn’t have to cut into the mattress for a report that was supposed to be on how Gabriel and his men got into the building, or break open the kid’s lock boxes  – which were probably just full of some kind of nerdy  porn nobody would understand anyway. But John knows the way the Feds work on a regular case, let alone when the ‘victim’ just happens to be a prominent name on their shitlist. 

The guys John’s been sent over to brief are Insurance, now. There’s really just the one twitchy, ferret-y looking type in a cheap suit and glasses who either has nothing to do with, or just zero control, over the other two –  little more than glorified garbage men in crinkly jumpsuits, charged with ‘collecting’ what’s left of the personal effects.

He can hear them on the other side of the eroding remains of what used to be the kid’s bedroom wall, sifting through the mounds of blasted plaster and sorting the burned, broken bits of Farrell’s life into two piles: stuff to keep, so the big wigs can deduct it from the kid’s payoff, and stuff to cart off with the rest of the garbage.

John looks down at what used to be Matt’s desk, now cracked in half and sticking up at both ends out of the sea of rubble and computer debris like the Titanic going down, and covered with a layer of dust thick enough to paint the dark surface as white as one of the icebergs that finished her. He runs a finger through the snowy layer of ash and sediment, half expecting it to still be hot enough to burn.

“What is this thing anyway?” somebody grunts from behind the wall, sounding like they’ve been here a while. “How the fuck are we supposed to know if it’s damaged property or if it was like this to start with?”

“When in doubt,” the other answers, followed by a crash and tinkle that John is pretty sure heralds something fragile being added unceremoniously to the ‘trash it’ pile.

The sound makes his jaw clench.

“You said the uh, bullets, came through the wall. How many holes would you say they made?”

“You gotta be kidding me.” But the ferrety guy doesn’t seem to be getting any sort of joke when John turns to look at him. “That wall?” He jerks his good shoulder backward, indicating the gaping space behind him. “The one that’s _gone_?”

“Yes, well,” Twitchy replies, checking his clipboard, “I have to fill out the field for—” 

John waves off the explanation he definitely doesn’t need. 

“Four.” 

The whole report is gonna be bullshit anyway, one more shovelful shouldn’t make a difference.

The toe of his boot nudges something out from under the blanket of ashes on the floor, and John can’t help the start of a smile, as he bends down to retrieve it. He gives it a shake, blows the dust off – and he’ll be damned if it’s not the same exact red and black plastic robot arm the kid gave him shit over right before Gabriel’s goons showed up and everything went to hell.

“Hey Carlo, check this out,” comes an amused cackle from the bedroom.

“Whaaaat a geek!” Carlo crows in reply. “Bet this dork never even ventured outside of this shithole. His pathetic life probably wasn’t even worth saving, let alone half of this shit.”

Crash.

“HEY!” John is past Ferret-boy and standing in what’s left of the doorway before he even remembers making the decision to move. 

“That _dork_ saved the whole country, pal!” He doesn’t know which one of the dipshits staring blankly at him now is Carlo, and fucked if he gives a shit anyway. “You’re still getting your salary because of this kid, and he’s still in the hospital recovering from taking a bullet for it. So maybe you can treat some of his shit with a little more respect, huh?”

Nobody says anything else, and John thinks about pocketing the hard, angular bit of plastic now cutting into his palm. He tosses the arm on the ‘keeper’ pile instead, and gives Carlo and company a last glare before turning around.

“We done here? You got my card if there’s anything else,” John says to Twitchy, without waiting for his answer.  “Thanks for your time…taking care of things.”

The sounds of sorting slowly start up again, as John steps over a few little mounds of rubble and out into the hallway, but this time at a gentler, quieter pace. Quiet enough even for him to hear one of the knuckleheads snicker, “shit, think I hit some kind of nerve, or what?”

John heads past the investigation-scene cordon toward the stairs, but he can’t help thinking he ain’t the one with the ‘nerve’. Jesus. Do these guys seriously keep forgetting the place doesn’t have any damn _walls_?

 

**Two: Coworkers**

Connie gets the picture right from the start; the day they hauled the kid in for questioning the second he could drag himself out of the hospital bed. 

McClane was in a foul mood all day. Standing there with folded arms, glowering from his self-appointed post outside the interview room like a junk yard dog. 

He’s not quite what she was expecting; skinny and pale and with entirely the wrong attitude for a couple of visiting Feds with jet-lag. But it makes a kind of sense somehow and something about the startled-rabbit gaze and nervous hands under the fragile veneer of not-giving-a-shit on the other side of the one-way glass tugs her heartstrings tight. 

They were easy on the kid, although she can admit that’s probably only because of McClane’s hovering act, which just intensifies the minute they tell Farrell he’s free to go. McClane is _everywhere_ all of a sudden. 

The kid can’t even keep track of him, the way John is reaching around him, collecting bits and pieces of paperwork and personal belongings like he’s grown extra limbs. Matt gives up trying to guess which shoulder to look over next and pulls the strap of his bag slowly over his head, looking slightly dazed with the hours of grilling. The action leaves the crown of his hair sticking up in a funny Little Rascals type configuration. 

It doesn’t seem to register with either of them, the way John reaches out on reflex to comb and smooth his hair back down with careful fingers – the kid is too busy trying and failing to keep up with instructions as McClane mother-hens him half to death. 

“I got your jacket. Grab your keys. Is that yours? Right there, comic book on the bench. I got it. Now come on, get your crutches Hop-Along, let’s get outta here.”  

McClane shifts all the crap he’s juggling over to one arm and shoulders the door open. A little of the colour comes back to the pale rabbit features when his free guiding hand settles high between the kid’s shoulder blades, and the tightness around Connie’s heart goes loose again.

 

**Three: Friends**

“How’s that kid,” Al asks in that voice he’s got, always warm as hot cocoa. “The one you brought by last Christmas – still dating your Lucy?”

“Pain in my ass,” John answers honestly, but from the wry chuckle they both share afterward, John figures he can hear the smile behind it. “...Matt’s great.”

Al is quiet a second, and John is just about to ask if that crackling he can hear is their shitty long distance connection or just the rustling of Twinkie wrappers, when that voice comes back with a slower, intent-sounding tone.

“How many years has it been, John? ...Since Holly?”

“What, why?” John says, maybe a little quicker than he should have. 

“Nah,” Al says dismissively. “Just thinkin’...” 

He doesn’t say _what_ he was thinking, though.

“...Not as young as we used to be, huh?” And the conversation moves on to Al Jr. and the expected arrival date of Alan J. Powell III.

 

**Four: Your family knows.**

Lucy figures it out the day they all go out for Japanese, and her father watches Matt’s mouth move a mile a minute as he rants about the evils of oyster farming.  

Dad’s relatively quiet all night – for Dad. He mostly sits there looking amused, while Matt manages to multitask his famine, flame, and apocalypse diatribe with inhaling fried shrimp until there are nothing but the tails left, and he’s reduced to stripping tempura batter delicately from the intricate triangle fans of shell with his teeth. He’s so busy moving on to the ecological menace that is the Asian Carp, he either doesn’t see, or just doesn’t think anything of it, when John dumps the remaining shrimp on his own plate onto Matt’s, like it’s a well worn habit. 

John looks over at her. Finally _somebody_  does. “You alright honey?” 

“Not hungry, Luce?” Matt asks her. She’s barely touched her plate.

Matt tips his head, the way he does whenever human emotions confound all the gears and wires he got for brains. He reaches out to lay his hand over hers though, smoothes his thumb questioningly over her wrist.

“You want me to order you something else? They have good noodles here,” Dad says. Until today, Lucy’s pretty sure she’s never seen her father eat sushi in his life.

She cancels with the caterer, the florist, the wedding singer _and_ the priest before she sits down to break it to Matt, in case he tries to talk her out of calling it off. 

But he doesn’t. 

 

**Five: Then you.**

John’s seen the tape so many times now, he can’t even remember the first. 

“I won’t do it,” Matt says, through cracked lips. His voice sounds as bruised as the rest of him. “Find someone else.”

He looks more exhausted than anything. The assholes have had him for a couple of days by now, but this is Matt, and if he was working when the fuckers took him, who knows how many days he’d been awake already. 

His hair is greasy and hangs in his face when his head droops tiredly forward, clumped together with what is probably blood. He brings up a hand to rub at his eye – the one that isn’t swollen nearly shut. The movement is awkward, but John’s seen this so many times now he can already see why. The shoulder on the other side sits a little lower, the arm just hanging sort of uselessly at his side.

A pair of hands enter the frame, reaching out to swivel the dirty desk chair they’ve got him in roughly to the side and Matt’s head jerks up with the motion, his features screwed up in pain. The movement of the chair pulls the limp, dislocated arm taut, the metallic tinkle of links enough of an indication they’ve got him chained to something too close to the camera to see – a desk or table meant to serve as a makeshift workstation.

Matt almost looks like himself from this angle. Most of the bruising is on the right side of his face, meaning the fucker who roughed him up was probably left-handed. Not that it narrows much down. They’re leaving the hand on the right side alone for a reason though. They want him to be able to type. 

A curtain of long, blonde hair swings into frame next, followed by a slim leg in army fatigues, and there’s a young woman settling herself over his knees. Matt doesn’t move, as if he’s used to this stranger just straddling his lap by now, like the forced invasion of his space is the least of his concerns.

“Who do you think you are,” she croons sickeningly, in an Eastern-european accent Linguistics tells him is too muddled to place. “You think you’re a big, American hero like your partner?” 

She reaches behind her and retrieves a handgun from someplace – a Glock 19 from what John can see. 

“Haven’t you learned what happens to heroes yet, Matthew?” she asks jovially, trailing the edge of the muzzle over the hair at Matt’s temple, and down over the shell of his ear. 

Matt says nothing, just looks stubbornly back at her. He barely even blinks. The rough stab of pride is nearly more painful than what happens next, and this is where John usually remembers to unclench the unconsciously curled fist he’s been making.

“I’ll find him, you know. Even if you won’t play nice and tell me where he is.” She tips her head as she says it, and this, Matt flinches away from – the way she’s leaning forward as if about to whisper something in his ear. 

There’s a nearly crescent-shaped bruise low down on his neck, that looks like it could be from her teeth. John can only hope to hell it’s not from somebody else’s. His stomach burns in revulsion at the thought, and the similarly shaped marks his fingernails have left in his palm throb in sympathetic symphony.

“I’ll find him juuuust like I found you,” she says, taking hold of Matt’s chin to turn his face back toward her and running her thumb firmly enough over his bottom lip that the cut there opens up again and leaves a fresh red smear. 

“And I think,” she says brightly, examining the blood on her thumb before licking her fingers as if she’s just eaten a melting candy bar. “… I’ll send him this tape.” 

She climbs off of Matt’s lap then, and gives the chair another rough shove so he’s facing the camera again. The wrench looks even more jarring this time, and Matt grits his teeth hard, but doesn’t make a sound. 

And then there she is, leaning in over his shoulder, blonde hair swept to the side so the camera gets a clear view of eerily light blue eyes, and pouting red lips. A face that would be beautiful if it weren’t spiderwebbed from her right cheek down to her jaw with a brutally intricate pattern of thin red scars.

“Hi John,” she says, with a cold, predatory smile. “We’ve never met. But I’m pretty sure that you remember my _dad_.”

The thing about killing Grubers is, it’s like stepping on cockroaches. You can crush every last one to show you its ugly mug in daylight, but you can never be sure you got all of them. 

“Last chance, Matty,” she says in his ear.

“I won’t,” Matt repeats, brokenly. “I’m not going to do it.”

“Not much more good to me then, are you?” she pouts. “Shame. …If there’s anything you want to tell him then, you better say it. Go on. Tell John goodbye, Matthew.” 

Matt raises his head enough to look right at the camera. John’s thumb hovers over the ‘stop’ button on the remote. 

“Nothing to tell him? No last minute confessions? No parting words for your _beloved_ hero?”

Matt’s expression doesn’t change. He looks straight into the camera until it seems he may have nothing to say after all. 

And then, the barest quirk of his mouth at the corner; the hint of a smile so small John is sure the kid meant for everyone to miss it except someone who would watch this moment again and again. Everyone except John.

“He already knows.”

Matt shuts his eyes before she even raises her gun, and John stops the tape. He’s never been able to finish it yet. But he can’t seem to stop playing it just this far, to see the certainty in Matt’s eyes, the fucked up peace there, that comes out of being _sure_ of something. 

 _He already knows_. The bottle to his right is empty, and John curses Jack Daniels out loud for leaving him enough working brain cells tonight that he can still wish the kid didn’t always have to be right.

 

They say coming out of the closet works exactly like falling in love. 

~~~

.


End file.
